IJK 273 
.C3 
I Copy 1 



1st Session 



} 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 



f Document 
1 No. 48 



FOLLOWERS AFTER 
STRANGE GODS 



By 



JOSEPH G. CANNON 

FORMER SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 



[From the Saturday Evening Post, May 3, 1913] 






May 15, 1913. — Ordered to be printed 



WASHINGTON 
1913 



^^"^l^ 




0. OF 0, 
WAY 23 1918 






>. 

^ 



FOLLOWERS AFTER STRANGE GODS. 



By Joseph G. Cannon, 
Former Speaker of the House of Representatives. 



Crusades for political regeneration come periodically, like other epi- 
demics. They are as different as are the measles, the whooping 
cough, and chicken pox. The crusaders are neither constant nor 
consistent. Each agitation is for a new idea, with new discoveries 
otf shortcomings in the Government and new remedies. 

I speak of these things with the utmost respect, because I have 
been a victim; and in my youth I sometimes despaired of the Republic 
and questioned the wisdom of the men who projected it. We had, 
back in the early fifties, the American or Know-nothing movement, 
so called because none of those engaged in it professed to know any- 
thing about it. They were franker than many of their successors 
in the reform movements we have had since that time, for these 
gentlemen profess to know all about everything. 

The Civil War absorbed the attention of the citizenship ; but even 
then we had men and newspapers in the North who thought that 
Lincoln was 'Hoo slow and unprogressive " or "too rash and impul- 
sive" ; and so much did they think alike on the central idea of oppo- 
sition to Lincoln that they easUy compromised their differences on 
principles to unite in their prejudices in an effort to defeat the reelec- 
tion of the Great Emancipator before the war was ended. 

Then we had the Liberal movement in 1872, with opponents of 
nationalism and protection supporting Greeley, the arch-opponent 
of State rights and free trade, with the assurance that they were the 
only men in this country governed by principle rather than by 
prejudice. Next came the Greenbackers, reenforced by the fiat 
money advocates, who insisted that the Federal Government could 
coin paper as well as gold and sUver and create wealth by the fiat 
of law. With them came the Prohibitionists, who believed that they 
could regulate man's appetite by statute and the Labor Party, which 
demanded special legislation for a class with the watchword of no 
class legislation. 

THE JONAHS OF POLITICS. 

A few years later we had the Grange and the Farmers' Alliance, 
which went a step further than the Greenbackers and insisted that 
Government deposits should be guaranteed by nonperishable agricul- 
tural products, which must have meant fertilizer, as that is the only 
nonperishable product of agriculture and the one into which all other 
agricultural products sooner or later resolve themselves. 

3 



4 FOLLOWERS AFTER STRANGE GODS. 

Then came the Populist Party — to reform everything; and a Httle 
later the Free Silver Part}^, which was to the Democratic Party as 
the whale was to Jonah until the Lord released him. Now we have 
the Progressive Party, which seems to have almost played the whale 
to a Kepublican Jonah for the time being. These reform movements 
have all been earnest, and perhaps honest, though misguided, in 
demanding legislative reforms that could not be realized, and after 
each effort the people behind them found a place in one or another of 
the old parties. 

The last impulsive movement ol this kind is more ambitious and, 
in my judgment, more misguided than all the others, because it does 
not stop at legislative reform, but goes directly to fundamental prin- 
ciples and seeks to rewrite or destroy the prmiarv law of the country 
as laid down in the Constitution. In all other efforts the people have 
been handicapped by tradition or sentiment, veneration or patriotism, 
or somethmg that made them hesitate to lay violent hands on the 
Ark of the Covenant. But no tradition or veneration or sentiment 
has stayed the hands of the latest crusaders of reform, for they would 
imhesitatingly rewrite the Constitution or do away with it entii*ely as 
the fundamental law and convert this Government into a pure 
democracy, to be swayed like an old-time camp meetmg by the fervor 
of the exhorter rather than by the logic of the ordained minister. 

I have had some patience with all former reform campaigns, for in 
my younger days T had some of the same impulses; and, moreover, had 
any one of these campaigns succeeded the experiment could have 
been undone as quickly and as easily as it was done, when the experi- 
ment proved that it was not the panacea for all our political ills. I 
have little patience with these latter-day reformers who would upset 
all the developments of more than a century of government by law 
and return to the old rule of the mob, led by men endowed with 
superior ability — or, rather, plausibility. Had the Progressive move- 
ment of last year succeeded in carrymg with it a majority of the 
people, and had it been lasting enough to have abrogated the Consti- 
tution, this country would have been committed to revolution as 
completely as was France to that which placed that country under 
the rule of an unrestrained majority and a reign of terror. It would 
have required years ol sanity to undo that work ol the wreckers and 
patiently build up agam a foundation of fundamental law. 

To a man who has passed half a century in public life m the most 
strenuous and progressive period ol civilization, and who has for nearly 
40 years had a part in the clash of opposing ideas, sentiment, and preju- 
dice in the House of Representatives, which Ls the clearing house of 
American policies, there has never been a more dangerous movement 
in American ])olitics or one more reactionary than this which has 
caught the eye of many people with the alluring label of the Pro- 
gressive Party. 

THE CHANGES OF A GENERATION. 

I have, as a boy, watched the old weather vane on the barn box the 
compass in an hour on a gusty April day, and wished I could be as 
free in my movements and not controlled by the hand of necessity in 
driving a straight farrow to the end of the field. But after some years 
of experience I have no desire to see a Government of 91,000,000 
people modeled after the weather vane, and swing to all points of the 



FOLLOWEKS AFTER STEANGE GODS. 5 

compass in response to the zephyrs of impulse and the gusts of senti- 
ment or the whirlwind of passion ; to lynch a man in an hour and build 
a monument to him in the next hour as a hero and a martyr to rumor 
and prejudice. 

No ; the Constitution may have been the work of ordinary and even 
mediocre men, rather than of the great geniuses they are pictured by 
tradition; but that work is the foundation upon which has been built 
the greatest superstructure of legislative enactment, executive ad- 
ministration, and judicial decision that has ever been known in civili- 
zation. I am not willing to see without protest government by dyna- 
mite, either by mistaken labor leaders or by other mistaken enthu- 
siasts, who would apply the dynamite theory and blow up the 
foundation of a government by the people. I object to such methods, 
even though the wreckers may be as wise as Solomon, as devoted to 
the people as Brutus professed to be, or as virtuous as pictured in their 
own prospectuses. 

I have seen this country develop under that Constitution so as to 
make the United States the marvel of the world and the model of free 
government everywhere, even in the Orient. I am old enough to 
have seen the radroads cross the Alleghany Mountains and spread 
like a spider web over the whole continent — to carry the products of 
the West to the seaboard more economically for the people than they 
could be exchanged in New England before this era of steam. 

I have seen the reaper and mower, the gang plow, and the whole 
revolution in agriculture by labor-saving machinery. I have seen 
the telegraph and the telephone when they were looked upon as exper- 
iments; the electric railroad and the electric power-plant develop- 
ment; and I was ridiculed as a reckless spendthrift legislator when I 
helped make considerable appropriations to aid Prof. Langley in his 
experiments with the flying machine. 

I have seen great discoveries in science and medicme that benefited 
the whole people in the years since I left North Carolina with my 
parents and heard my mother cry out, "Good-by, civilization," be- 
cause we were emigrating to the West. And I have seen greater 
development, not only of enterprise, but also of education, charity, 
and benevolence, by the people, as a whole, through the agency of 
the State and also by the efforts of the individual, than had developed 
before m all the years from Moses to the time when I was born. 

I may "be a little old-fashioned, a little wedded to the past, but I 
like to ride in an automobile; and when I engage a chauffeur I look 
to his famiharity with the machine and how it is made, rather than 
to his ability to toot a horn and turn on all the power to surprise and 
scatter the crowd with his nerve and speed. And in government I 
prefer a chauffeur who can turn a corner without skidding against 
the curb and wrecking the machine. The auto is a progressive 
machine and a promoter of business or funerals — it depends on the 
chauffeur. 

In a government of the people and by the people there must of 
necessity be political parties to express the will of the people touch- 
ing national policies. It has been so from the beginning and will be 
so to the end. There have been two great parties, under varying 
names, since the Government was founded, and for more than 60 
years these parties have been under the names Republican and 
Democrat. The Democratic Party is now in full power and has 



6 FOLLOWERS AFTEE STBANGE GODS. 

full responsibility for legislation. That party represents the will of 
the people by a constitutional majority, and the change has come 
without any manifestation of passion or revolutionary protest. We 
all accept President Wilson as our President and the Democratic 
Congress as our Congress to make the laws and administer them. 
No better evidence could be presented that the American people are 
capable of self-government. 

No one wishes the present administration success more than I do, 
for the success of the Government represents the success of the 
people. That is what we are all striving for; and we shall all wait 
with patience to see whether the Democratic Party, in carrying out 
its pohcies, can give greater prosperity more diversified among the 
people, greater peace and happiness, than followed the enactment of 
Republican policies. If they can succeed in doing this they will 
have long life and deserve it. There is, however, wise caution in 
King Ahab's advice to the King of Syria: "Let not him that girdeth 
on his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off." 

There have been two great questions on which the American people 
have divided, and these two questions naturally created two great 
poUtical parties. These questions were the extension of slavery into 
the national territory and the revenue policy. Both were funda- 
mental. Other questions were secondary. 

One of these questions has been settled — at great cost, it is true, 
but in a way that no one now would have changed. The whole 
country has developed and prospered under the new freedom of men 
that could not have been under the old system of slavery. No one 
has more happily expressed the advantages of this change than did 
President Harrison in his inaugural address, when he said: "Mill 
fires were lighted at the funeral pile of slavery. The emancipation 
proclamation was heard in the depths of the earth as well as in the 
sky; men were made free and material things became our better 
servants." 

AN ERA OF SWIFT EXPANSION. 

My honored friend, the leader of the majority in the House, Mr. 
Underwood, can testify to the force of this expression. I under- 
stand that the great industrial city where he has his home is the best 
illustration of mill fires lighted at the funeral pile of slavery that can 
be found in the country; for the iron ore, coal, and limestone which 
give life to that city had lain for a hundred years under a cotton 
plantation, and that wealth was not brought to the surface until the 
emancipation proclamation was heard in the depths of the earth to 
make these factors better servants than had been slavery. 

While I rejoice in the new development and prosperity of the 
South, and also of the East, let me briefly call attention to the devel- 
opment which came, with a force never before witnessed anywhere, 
bj^ reason of the abolition of servile labor, by the granting of home- 
steads for the people on the national domain, and under the Repub- 
lican policy of protection. We have some people now who fear the 
Government has been too liberal and has wasted its public land; 
but I can remember when the Government practically could not 
give away lands that are now worth $200 an acre. We have given 
away millions of acres of the public lands; but we have by so doing 



FOLLOWEES AFTER STEANGE GODS. 7 

built up an empire in little more than half a century that could not 
have been developed in a thousand years under the old regime, and 
we have made men more of an asset than mere land. The map of 
the United States to-day, as compared with the map in the geogra- 
phies when I was a boy, tells the story more graphical^, and so do 
the reports of the Census Office. 

When I left North Carolina to find a home in the West my map of 
the United States had little but Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois as the 
West; and beyond the Mississippi River was marked the Great 
American Desert, the Staked Plains, and the Rocky Mountains — a 
country of which few men knew anything. The United States was 
then practically east of the Mississippi River. There were but two 
States west of the Mississippi River — Missouri and Arkansas. Our 
total population was seventeen millions with less than four millions 
west of the Allegheny Mountains. But to-day we have ninety-one 
million people in the United States, and forty-five millions of them 
are in that territory which was then called the West and the unex- 
plored country beyond. 

Why, in 1860 we had but thirty-one million people in this country, 
and only eleven millions west of the Alleghanies. We encouraged 
and protected manufacture and agriculture; we passed homestead 
laws ; gave public lands to the people and to aid in the construction 
of the Pacific railroads. This legislation covered the whole country 
and gave an impetus to every kind of industrial development; and, 
with the settlement of the old question of checking the extension of 
slavery, it made the East a center of manufacture and the Great 
American Desert and the Staked Plains the granary of the world. 
Even the mountain fastnesses have been converted into gardens, and 
millions of enterprising people there are still unable to estimate their 
wealth and opportunity. 

I have no regret for the liberality of the Government in giving 
away public lands, for this liberality brought such results as would 
not have been recorded in many generations under the old policy of 
having the Government hoard its public lands and wait for purchasers. 
The losses to the Government were relative. The railroads and the 
homesteads were tremendous factors in the building of a nation; 
and to-day nearly one-half of our western people are there, making 
two-thirds of all the wealth taken from the soil and two-fifths of all 
the manufactured products of this country. Yes; the Government 
has been liberal and liberally has it been rewarded. 

We were liberal in our iiTimigration policy, and millions of men and 
women from every civilized country under the sun took advantage of 
that liberal policy to come here and become American citizens. 
Wlio can look over this American commonwealth and tell from 
whence came the blood of the great body of the American citizenship ? 
We have developed men from those who here first learned the meaning 
of the word manhood, and we have developed industry, skill, enter- 
prise, and intelligence in keeping with American citizenship. It is in 
this new West that we havs the lowest percentage of illiteracy to be 
found in the United States. When I am inclined to grow pessimistic 
after readmg some of the wailings and criticisms of latter-day 
economists and reformers, I take down the map of the United States 
and a volume of the census reports and find there the realization of 
the wildest dreams of the greatest optimists who ever lived; and I 



8 FOLLOWERS AFTER STRANGE GODS. 

am satisfied that the mistakes of the past were, after all, rather 
fortunate mistakes. 

This marvelous development of the West, however, demoralized 
agricultural conditions m the East and in the older countries across 
the sea. It demoralized the western people, too, for a time, because 
they could not measure their own opportunities with older conditions 
that prevailed elsewhere. The opening of the new prairie lands of the 
West made com])etition in the East embarrassing and sent millions of 
acres in New England, the North Atlantic, antl the South Atlantic 
States back to the wild lands and abandoned farms. 

The House of Representatives, where the membership is based on 
population, tells the story of our develoi)ment as a nation. In 1840, 
when I went to the West,' the old South had 98 Representatives; New 
England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania had 112, and all 
the countr}' west of the Allegheny Mountains had only 32. To-day, 
in the same grouping, the Old South has 109 Representatives, the East 
124, and the West 202 ; and there are 1 15 Members now in the House 
who come from States that were unknown in 1840. 

The statesmen in the Washmgton of that day, while talking about 
"fifty-four-forty or fight," had not yet determined that the Oregon 
countrv' was worth keepmg. Notwithstanding the explorations of 
Lewis and Clark, in the earty part of the nineteenth century, there 
were men in Congress in 1840 who insisted that the Rocky Moimtains 
marked our western boundary and that a statue of the fabled god 
Termmus should be planted tliere to warn our i)eople against tempt- 
ing fate by trying to go farther. 

Gen. Fremont had not then set out on his exploration of the West, 
and the old missionary, Marcus Whitman, hatl not made that memor- 
able ride from WaUa Walla down across Utah and Colorado and 
through Missouri in the winter to tell the wise men in the National 
Capital that there were Americans in Oregon who had made their way 
across the mountains and were beginning to set up housekeeping for 
themselves with a government under the American flag, but without 
the recognition of the parent Government. I have seen one-half of 
the 48 States admitted to the Union and, as a Member of the House, 
I have helped admit 11 of them. 

THE WESTWARD COURSE OF EMPIRE. 

The West is not all-wise and the demagogues have been as success- 
ful there as in the older sections of the country. They have preached 
new doctrines and are tiying some experiments that have failed else- 
where. The peo})le have been too busy to study these questions for 
themselves; but they will in time, and then tliey will cease to be 
gulled by demagogic theories as opposed to practical conditions. I 
have heard much talk about progress and progressive ideas and poli- 
cies in the last few years; but I have seen no better evidences of 
progress than were manifest by the pioneers who peopled the^ West 
and created an empire greater and richer than was the whole Nation, 
which at that time gave more of discouragement than of aid to their 
progressive efforts. 

I have heard in Congress some of the men who aided in that first 
progressive western movement denounced as reactionaries. They can 
not protest, because they are dead; but that is the way of progress— 



FOLLOWEES AFTER STRANGE GODS. 9 

in the hurry to get forward we fail to note the work of the front 
rank who blazed the trail and opened the way for the newer Progres- 
sives. When I see men beat the air and grow hysterical about pro- 
gressive policies, I am tempted to call their attention to the great 
picture that fills the wall space over the western stairway of the 
House wing of the Capitol, which portrays the progress of their 
forbears who went out and conquered the West. I have never been 
schooled in the arts, but to me that picture is one of the most inspiring 
paintmgs I have ever seen. I have passed it these many years; and 
I have never failed to look up at those heroic men and women who 
moved westward, scalmg the Rocky Mountains, which some of those 
in Congress marked as the boundary the Almighty had placed there 
to limit the adventurous spirit of the American and forever fix the 
western confines of the Republic. 

Those progressive spirits of the past did not make the air vibrate 
with lamentations, but with shouts of encouragement as the stalwart 
youths planted the flag on the higher cliffs to inspire with courage the 
women and children who were toiling up the path to find a way to the 
golden Pacific beyond. They did not even tarry long to bury the 
dead, but silently prepared the grave there in the mountain fastnesses 
and, with a benediction, passed on to the new duties and new con- 
quests. 

When the history of the West and the men and women who made it 
is written, larger space will, I hope, be given to the pioneers who 
toiled and suffered in silence than to those who have from time to 
time grown hysterical over the growing pains of this mighty empire 
that has spread in my time from the Mississippi to the Pacific, and 
beyond the Arctic Circle and almost to the shores of Siberia. 

I have for 40 years heard the lamentations of western poHtical 
progressives because nature gave that section a surplus of wheat and 
corn which could not be turned into gold and silver at once and a 
surplus of silver which could not be turned into coin of the realm at 
the mint on demand. I have heard the lamentations of the Green- 
backer and the Populist in days gone by, and they were no more 
doleful than some of the progressives of to-day. More than 20 years 
ago, when I offered an amendment to the Mills tariff bill to place 
sugar on the free list, as we did not then need the revenue, the Kansas 
delegation to a man complained that I was striking at the great Sun- 
flower State, which had begun to raise sorghum. They had the 
figures to prove that with protection to sugar Kansas would in a few 
years produce more sorghum sugar than would be necessary to sweeten 
the tooth of the whole civUized world. 

The tariff on sugar has remained, but what has become of Kansas 
sorghum ? It now sounds like a joke, but Kansas was just as earnest 
then and just as apprehensive of the calamity to that State from free 
sugar as she is now hopeful for the initiative and the recall. The 
grasshopper blight was no more perilous to Kansas than was free 
sugar, and neither of them more awful to contemplate than are 
reactionary policies, to-day. Moses, in his rebuke to the chddren of 
Israel, said the Lord had found them in the desert lands and made 
them to ride on the high places of the earth and eat from the fat of 
the land, with milk and honey. "But Jeshurun waxed fat and 
kicked," and followed after strange gods. So it has ever been with 
the children of men. So it has been with a part of the people of these 
United States. 



10 FOLLOWERS AFTER STRANGE GODS. 

THE AMAZING INCREASE OF WEALTH. 

In the last 10 years we have had the most phenomenal prosperity 
ever known here or anywhere else ; and we have followed the example 
of the Children of Israel and kicked until not only have we almost 
convinced ourselves that we are suffering imiisiial hardships, but 
have caused the people of the Old World to wonder if at last their 
predictions are not commg true, and that the Republic is about to 
crumble under dissatisfaction and division. I do not make this 
assertion about our prosperity on my own observation alone. I take 
the census figures, and I am told at the Census Office that our total 
wealth is to-day estimated at $150,000,000,000; it was $88,000,000,000 
in 1900, $65,000,000,000 in 1890, and only $16,000,000,000 in 1860. 
The increase in wealth was not only the greatest in volume but the 
greatest in percentage in the last decade that has ever been recorded 
by the Census Office. 

This total wealth has not been gathered into the hands of the 
Money Trust or the tariff barons, nor has it been centered in Wall 
Street. It is just where wealth has always been — among the people 
who go to the soil, the mine, and the factory and produce wealth. 
The total value of farm property increased from $20,000,000,000 in 
1900 to $41,000,000,000 m 1910, and to this should be added the 
estimates of the Agricultural Department of $9,000,000,000 for last 
year's crop to make the farm wealth of the country $50,000,000,000, 
or one-third of the total wealth of the country. 

Our manufactured product was valued at $20,000,000,000 in 1910, 
and this does not include the value of the plants. Our railroads are 
worth $20,000,000,000, and the real estate in cities and towns is esti- 
mated at between $40,000,000,000 and $45,000,000,000. So, with- 
out counting the value of the mines and the shipping interests on 
the coasts and on the Great Lakes, I can find no evidence that the 
Money Trust has gobbled u]^ all our wealth. The value of farms and 
farm property not only doubled in the last 10 years, but it has 
increased fivefold in the last 40 years, for this farm wealth was only 
$8,000,000,000 in 1870, and it is now almost as great as the total 
wealth of the country in 1880. 

It may help to relieve the fear from the Money Trust to locate this 
farm wealth. It is not in New York or in New England, or within 
a thousand miles of Wall Street. More tlian thirty-two billions, or 
more than four-fifths of it, is in the West — the country that has been 
developed in my time. Let me repeat the fraction — four-fifths of 
all our farm wealth is west of the Allegheny Mountains, in what was 
the old Northwest Territory and in the States west of the Mississippi 
River, where the people are still supposed to be easily frightened 
over the bugbear of a Money Trust ; but to-da}^ those western farmers 
use high-power automobiles on their farms and have safe-deposit 
vaults in the village banks. And, should this Money Trust make a 
raid into that country, the people could piobably escape with their 
ready cash. Only $8",000,000,000 of this farm wealth is to be found 
in New England, the North Atlantic and South Atlantic States — or 
what was consideied the United States when I was a boy in North 
Carolina. 

New England has 4,000,000 acres less of improved farmland than 
she had in 1860; tlie Middle Atlantic States 4,000,000 acres less of 



FOLLOWEES AFTER STEANGE GODS. 11 

improved farmland than in 1880; and the South Atlantic States 
3,000,000 acres less of all farmlands than in 1860. This means that 
the farmers of the country are in the West and that there has been 
an increase of 500,000,000 acres of farms in that new empire. It 
means that two-thirds of all the crop values are in the West; that 
80 per cent of all the cereals is raised in the West; that 77 per cent 
of all the cattle, 80 per cent of the horses, 77 per cent of the hogs, 86 
per cent of the sheep, 66 per cent of the dairy products, and 72 
per cent of the eggs are produced in the West. 

This may explain to some people in the East why food products 
are higher now to them than a few years ago. They have to buy 
from the West; and the West s not only feeding them but an m- 
creased industrial population at home, as well as selling abroad 
when the prices are sufficient to invite export. In addition to these 
factors the West has 56 per cent of all the mineral products of the 
country. It has practically all the gold and silver, 86 per cent of the 
iron ore, 43 per cent of all the coal, 58 per cent of the petroleum and 
natural gas, and 40 per cent of all the manufactured products. 
The West has the raw material and is fast developing its manufac- 
turing industries, so as to turn its own products out ready for the 
consumer. 

THE TARIFF ISSUE FUNDAMENTAL. 

This may explam why the West is not as hostile to protection as it 
once was. But has not the Lord blessed these western people as He 
did the Children of Israel, makmg them ride on the high places and 
live on the fat of the land ? And have not some of them waxed fat 

and kicked ? , i i i i 

We settled the slavery question, and smce then we have had the 
revenue policy as the great question to divide our people; it is a 
natural and legitimate issue. On that question we have had divisions 
since the organization of the Government, and we shall continue to 
divide on it for years to come. The Democratic Party still holds to 
the old Democratic policy of a tariff for revenue only, while the 
Republican Party stands for the old doctrme of protection to Ameri- 
can production." We each have good ancestry for our political 
belief touchmg this question, but I think the Democratic policy 
belongs to the old system of labor that has been abolished. 

The revenues that maintain the machinery of government form 
the very lifeblood of the Government, and the revenue policy is 
fundamental. We can cross party lines on other questions, but here 
is where we must represent the people on a fundamental issue; and 
the man who desires to take the tariff out of politics does not know 
what he is talking about— in my judgment. So long as we have 
these two schools of economic thought as to the policy governing 
the raising of revenues, the tariff will remain a question of politics — 
and of the highest and best order of politics at that. 

We who represent the projection policy have been in control for 
many years. Since 1860 the Democrats have had complete control 
to enact laws in harmony with their poUcy for only the short period 
of two years. They then enacted the Wilson-Gorman tariff law. I 
am not going into the history of that act, but it did not meet with the 
approved of a majority of the American people, and for 16 years we 



12 FOLLOWERS AFTER STRANGE GODS. 

have again been able to have this Government follow our policy of 
protection. The country has pros])ered under that policy. 

The Democrats have again come into control and have all the 
machinery to enact a tariff law in harmony with the policy they have 
consistently maintained should be the proper revenue policy of this 
Government. Their platform last year was just as radical on this 
question as it was in 1892, and even more radical than in the years 
before the Civil War. I do not believe that policy when carried into 
effect will be any more satisfactory to the people than it was in 1894; 
but we all have maintained that platforms represent the demands of 
the people; and, as Mr. Cleveland said, should be accepted as the 
decree of the masters of Congress and written into the statutes. 

President Cleveland, in his inaugural address on March 4, 1893, 
declared : 

The people of the United States have decreed that on this day the control of their 
Government in its legislative and executive branches shall be given to a political party 
pledged in the most positive terms to the accomplishment of tariff reform. They have 
thus determined in favor of a more just and equitable system of Federal taxation. 
The agents they have chosen to carry out their purposes are bound by their promises, 
not less than by the command of their masters, to devote themselves unremittingly 
to this service. 

And yet President Cleveland refused to sign the Wilson-Gorman 
tariff bill, indicating by that action that either the Congress or the 
President forgot or ignored the command of their masters. 

THE ROUGH ROAD OF REFORM. 

I have no doubt President Wilson will remind Congress of the 
same promise — -that the Democrats are to carry out the command 
of their masters, who have voted for a change in our revenue policy. 
I tlo not believe it will succeed any better than it did in 1894; but 
I recognize that it would be craven and disloyal if they did not make 
the effort and devote their best energies to a tariff revision in har- 
mony with tlieir platform — a tariff for revenue only — and set their 
faces stendy against incidental protection or progressive free trade, 
or any other compromise between the two systems. They have 
declared all protection to be unconstitutional and the robbery of 
the many for the benefit of the few. They can not compromise the 
Constitution, nor can they comjiromise with robbery. I have no 
doubt they will try to reach their ideal in a tariff bill, and I suspect 
they will find fairly good Democrats in Congress who are perfectly 
willing to strike down the tariff that protects some other industry 
in some other State, but who will urge delay touching schedules 
that benefit their own people in the States and districts they repre- 
sent. 

It is the weakness of human nature for men to be more eager to 
reform the affairs of others than to reform their own. We had that 
kind of human nature to deal with, and the Democrats wdl have it 
to deal wdth. They will even find the great metropolitan press, 
which has been with them in favor of tariff reform, differentiating 
as to what the term means when they come to deal with its i)roduct. 
But they will have to do this, whether their work meets with the 
ap])roval of a majority of the people or not, for political parties are 
made up of the l)est manhood of the country, notwithstanding the 



FOLLOWEES AFTER STRANGE GODS. 13 

wails of the miickraker, and the manhood of the Democratic party 
is now compelled to go forward with legislation to carry out the 
platform of that party, whether their new legislation spells political 
defeat or political victory. 

A constitutional majority of the people has given the command, 
and the Democrats can not ignore that command without being 
condemned for cowardice and treachery to the people, which would 
be worse than condemnation for another failure of their poUcy. 
They will be opposed by the same forces that have opposed them 
in the past. The opposition will not be measured by the men who 
are called Republicans in Congress — these may be few — but the 
opponents will be the people of the United States who believe in 
protection — the men on farm and in factory, who will be the first 
affected by the policy when written into law. They are the pro- 
ducers, and they are also the consumers of the country. 

It was one of the Democratic policies that brought defeat to their 
political opponents last year. They furnished the votes to pass the 
reciprocity pact, which received the indorsement of a Democratic 
House in"^ the beginning of the Sixty-second Congress. That act, 
carrying into law the recommendations of a Republican President, 
raised up more opposition to him than any other act of his admin- 
istration; in fact the good acts of his administration were not all 
equal in the balance to the weight of that one act with a very large 
part of the American people. A majority of the Republicans m 
Congress voted against that bill, though it came from a Republican 
President; but it received a hybrid majority both in the Plouse and 
in the Senate that placed it on the statute books, and some men 
said the tariff had been taken out of politics. The opposite was 
true. That act raised up opposition to the President in his own 
party and all explanations could not satisfy the people. 

We had there a demonstration of the fact that the tariff is in 
politics, whether men in public life choose to discuss it or not. The 
President's friends tried to ignore the reciprocity pact— tried to forget 
that there had been such recommendation and legislation; and so 
did the newspapers after they had secured free print paper; but the 
people would not forget. 

This question must be settled according to one policy or the other. 
The Democrats have declared in favor of a tariff for revenue only 
and they will break with then- own people if they are not true to 
their profession of faith. On the other hand, they will drive back 
to their old moorings all protectionists who were not satisfied with 
the present tariff law if they do carry out the pledges of their plat- 
form. I do not see how they are to escape the embarrassment of 
the old preacher out on the Wabash, who said : 

You shall and you shan't; 

You will and you won't; 
You'll be damned if you do 

And be damned if you don't. 

I have seen a number of efforts made at tariff revision as well as 
a number of tariff bills enacted by Congress. The Democratic Party 
tried to revise the tariff in the Forty-eighth Congress, when William 
R. Morrison, as chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, 
reported his famous horizontal reduction bill. Some of the best 
protection speeches I have ever heard in the House were made by 
Democrats in opposition to that bill. 



14 FOLLOWERS AFTER STRANGE GODS. 

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. 

When the bill came up for final vote on May 6, 1884, it was George 
L. Converse, an Ohio Democrat, who moved to strike out the enacting 
clause. That motion was carried in Committee of the Whole in a 
House that had a Democratic majority of 74. The Democratic oppo- 
nents of that bill were not satisfied without a record, and when the 
bill was reported from the Committee of the Whole to the House, with 
the recommendation that the enacting clause be stricken out, Mr. 
Converse demanded a roll call; and on that roll call 40 Democrats 
voted with the Republicans against the bill reported from a Demo- 
cratic Committee on Ways and Means. 

Among those Democrats who voted against the Morrison bill were 
Samuel J. Randall, who had been the Democratic Speaker; Andrew G. 
(\utiii, an old Democratic war governor of Pennsylvania; and 
William McAdoo, of New Jersey. William R. Morrison, the first 
great tariff revisionist since the CivU War, was beaten in the House 
of his friends; and his bill only provided for 10 per cent and 20 per 
cent reductions on the various schedules. 

I saw the Democratic Party in control of the House when it passed 
the ^lills bill, and there was strenuous opposition by Democrats as 
well as Republicans to that measure. I saw Samuel J. Randall pun- 
ished for his opposition when Morrison reported from the Committee 
on Rules a new rule taking from the Committee on Appropriations 
the control of man}' appropriation bills and giving them to other 
committees. That was done to minimize the influence of Randall, 
who was chairman of the Conimittee on Appropriations. 

I was in the House when it passed the Wilson tariff bill, and I 
heard the present Speaker denounce those Democrats who opposed 
the bill as traitors to the people. I also heard Democrats in the 
House declare they would never accept the Senate bill; and after 
many, protestations they suddenly grew tired of their opposition and 
adopted a rule by whicn the House had to vote on the whole list of 
Senate amendments without division. So I am impressed with the 

Possibility that they may have trouble in enacting a tariff law m 
armony with their platform, and that they wUl have trouble if they 
do succeed. Irresponsible promise and responsible performance have 
different effects. 

We do not need any new system of initiative, referendum, and recall. 
The system that is as old as the Government is entirely effective. 
The election of a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress 
last fall was the initiative for a tariff for revenue only, and the people 
have the power to reverse the legislative engine two and four years 
from now. They are the only power to recall the command given 
last November; and, though it may be discouraging to the Democratic 
efforts to realize that they may be recalled, it is one of the fates of 
those who represent the people m our form of government. 

We have had much discussion about the high cost of living and the 
Democrats have laid the responsibility on the tariff. They are now 
to demonstrate just how much and in what way the tariff affects the 
cost of living, especially when more than one-half of our people live 
in sections of the country which produce less than one-fourth of the 
food products. 



FOLLOWEKS AFTER STRANGE GODS. 15 

THE middleman's TOLL. 

After all, it is an old saying that it costs more to market a product than 
to produce it. We have developed an extravagant if not a luxurious 
method of marketing our products, of both the farm and the factory.^ 
An ultimate consumer up in Winnipeg last fall bought a barrel of 
apples, and found a note m the barrel from the apple grower in Ontario, 
which read: "I got 70 cents for this barrel of apples. What did you 
pay for it ? " Mmd you, that was not in this country, but in Canada — ■ 
a country many consumers have desired to reciprocate with in trade. 

Well, the Winnipeg consumer had paid $5.25 for the apples. He 
was anxious to know where the $4.55 increase went, and he found 
that the barrel had cost 30 cents and the freight 70 cents. Still there 
was left $3.55 to pay for the cost of marketing the fruit. It is the 
same over here with a suit of clothes. 

The Tariff Board gave us an example m its report. That board 
found that in a suit of clothes selling for $23 and upward the wool- 
grower received $2.32 for the wool; the woolen manufacturer received 
$4.78 for the cloth, and the cost of all the material that entered into 
the making of the suit, except the labor, was $7.55. The cost of 
making the suit was $3.74 and the entire factory cost of the clothes 
was $12.41. This was the factory price, but the consumer had to 
pay anywhere from $23 to $30 for that suit of clothes. If the suit 
sold for $23 the profits between the factory and the consumer 
amounted to $10.59; if it sold for $25 it cost more to get that suit 
from the factory to the consumer than it did from the back of the 
sheep through the factory. 

Mr. B. F. Yoakum has estimated that in the year 1911 the farmers 
received $6,000,000,000 for their products, and that the consumer 
paid $13,000,000,000 for those same products. The railroads received 
$495,000,000 for transportation; so that the cost of production and 
transportation combined was less than one-haK of the price paid by 
the ultimate consumer. More than $6,500,000,000 went to pay the 
expenses and the profits of the men who sold these products to the 
consumer. The tariff had nothing to do with it. This is one of the 
problems the Democrats have to deal with, and they will only 
embarrass themselves by continuing to hold the tariff responsible 
for all the troubles of the ultimate consumer. 

When the Democrats have fulfilled their promise for revenue reform 
they will find how numerous are their critics, and that criticism and op- 
position will crystallize just as they have in times past under the same 
old organization and the same old principles that have dominated the 
Republican Party since its organization. A good many gentlemen 
have been agitating about the future, but I have no fear as to the future 
of the Republican Party. It will not be reorganized in Des Moines 
or in New York, or Chicago, or Kansas City, or by any group of men 
who are willing to undertake the direction of its affairs. 

The Republican Party does not need reorganization. It is as much 
in evidence now as it was in 1892, when it went to defeat. It has 
been temporarily divided between personal ambitions, but personal 
ambitions have never made the party and they will be of little effect 
when the Democrats have enacted legislation in harmony with their 
pohcy. The Repubhcan Party will be in the field then and the 
millions of Republicans will select theii* leaders just as they have 
always done in the past. In a government of the people the leaders 



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FOLLOWERS AFTER STRANGE GO! 



16 

come from the ranks and are not designated either uy j^i*xxx^ w~„„ • 
or by self-constituted authority. Do not make the mistake of 
thinking that the raiment of Lincoln has been parceled out by any 
board of executors who may think they have been appointed to settle 
the estate of the Republican Party. 

Some of my former associates in the Republican Party, who have 
come to the conclusion they are the John the Baptists for a political 
regeneration, are anxious to reorganize the Republican Party. They 
claim that the old party has strayed after false gods and that they 
are the only true followers of Lincoln. I have heard this claim pre- 
sented by others in the past who made no pretensions of relation- 
ship — even the remotest — to the Republican Party. For instance, 
the senior Senator from South Carohna, who would resent the sug- 
gestion that he is anything but an old-fashioned Democrat, traveled 
over my State several years ago campaigning for William J. Bryan, 
and carried with him a volume of Lincoln's speeches from which he 
quoted to show that Bryan was a better follower of Lincoln than waa 
Theodore Roosevelt. 

JUDAS OR SAUL OF TARSUS. 

The Republican Party may need some reformation — not reor- 
ganization; but that work will not be left to any self-constituted 
leadership. It is said that Judas claimed to be one of the earliest 
tlisciples of the Master and that Saul of Tarsus was not converted 
until he was bhnded by a great light. Does any one now present the 
whole history of Judas and his 30 pieces of reform silver as an evidence 
that he did more than Paul to establish the Christian religion ? The 
RepubUcan Party is to-day constituted — just as it was before the 
election — of the millions of men who believe in protection to American 
production; and the Democratic Party in Congress is going to sound 
the note which will show that the Republican Party does not need 
any other organization than the note of alarm that will come from 
the House early this summer. 

Both political parties have had great leaders, and these leaders 
have grown up in the service. They have not been selected by any 
small body of men to be clothed with the people's approval. We 
had one sad illustration of the failure of that kind of leadershij) when 
a few public-spirited men, who had opportunity to make themselves 
heard, selected an old-time Republican to lead the liberal hosts and 
the Democratic phalanx to the White House. It was one of the 
saddest tragedies in our political history. There were brilliant and 
able men in the movement of 1872, and they controlled the greatest 
organs of publicity in the country. They were able to make a great 
noise ; but when the ballots were counted it was the silent deep and 
not the shallows that spoke. 

Grant was re-elected with the most overwhelming majority ever 
given up to that time to a President, and Horace Greeley died of a 
broken heart a few days after the election. But for the tragedy 
which followed, that effort of Carl Schurz, Murat Halstead, Horace 
White, Whitelaw Reid, and Henry Watterson would have been one 
of the greatest jokes of American politics. As it was, it showed how 
a few men in control of the organs of publicity can fool a great political 
party by adopting the same methods those do who sell breakfast 
foods and patent medicines — by advertising their wares. 

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